402 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



but during those three years the average price of cotton 

 wool imported was only r>^d. per lb., and that of flax 

 only 5d. per Ih. So that wool is about three times the 

 market price of the two vegetable substances which 

 form the raw materials of the cotton and linen manu- 

 factures. Nor can sheep's wool be augmented in quan- 

 tity so rapidly as raw materials whicli merely require 

 the cultivation of the soil. The fleece, at least in this 

 country, forms only a small proportion of the value of 

 the sheep on which it grows, and the sheep farmer is 

 more dependent on the demand for his mutton than 

 on the demand for his wool. Now tlic consum]>tion of 

 animal food only increases, as a general rule, with the 

 increase of population; and hence there is a natural re- 

 striction on the supply of sheep's wool, owing to which 

 restriction the price is kept high. 



The largest supply of the raw material is from the 

 United Kingdom ; but nearly half the domestic wool 

 is consumed in the worsted manufacture, and the other 

 half is used for the lower kinds of woollen goods. 

 Within living memory, Yorkshire cloth was made ex- 

 clusively of English wool, though Spanish wool has 

 been used for more than two centuries for the finer 

 cloths of the West of England. 



The cloth of the present day is immensely superior, 

 both in fabric and in finish, to the cloth of half a cen- 

 tury back. Working men now wear finer cloth than 

 gentlemen wore then. In the last half of the eighteenth 

 century, the import of foreign wool fluctuated from a 

 little under to a little over two million pounds weight 

 a year ; but last year the quantity of foreign and colo- 

 nial wool imported was 124,528,000 lbs., of which 

 about 98,000,000 lbs. was retained for home consump- 

 tion. The changes which have taken place in the 

 sources of supply during the century are remarkable. 

 While in 1800 to 1810 we received 6,000,000 lbs. an- 

 nually from Spain, now we do not get half a million 

 pounds a year from thence. Of German wool, we 

 scarcely receiived any in the beginning of the century : 

 twenty-five years ago we received the largest pro- 

 portion of our foreign supplies from thence, about 

 2G,000,0001bs. ; but now India and our colonies con- 

 tribute the great bulk of our foreign supplies. 



Though a large part of the raw material is grown at 

 home, we have absolutely no reliable statistics of the 

 amount of this famous product of the British Isles. 

 The judgment of those even engaged in the trade varies 

 very widely. The late Mr. John Luccock — a wool mer- 

 chant of Leeds, and a careful inquirer — in a work pub- 

 lished by him in 1800, " On the Nature and Properties 

 of Wool," estimated the number of sheep in England 

 and Wales at 20,147,703, and the quantity of wool pro- 

 duced annually at 94,370,610 lbs. weight. The late 

 Mr. James Hubbard revised this estimate in 1828 for 

 a committee of the House of Lords, with the aid of Sir 

 George Goodman, both of those gentlemen being wool 

 merchants in Leeds, and they raised the quantity of 

 wool to 111,100,500 lbs. Professor Low, in his able 

 work " On the Domesticated Animals of the British 

 Islands," published in 1845, estimates the number of 

 sheep in the British Islands at 35,000,000, and tlie 



produce of wool at 157,500,0001bs. Mr. T. Southey, 

 wool-broker, in a little work publislied in 1850, judg- 

 ing from the information he received from wool mer- 

 chants in Leeds, Bradford, and other places, raised the 

 estimate to 228,950,000 lbs. ; and then, by an unreli- 

 able mode of calculating, even carried it to the enor- 

 mous figure of 275,000,000 lbs. weight. 



The balance of authority, Mr. Baines states, disposes 

 him to conclude that the annual produce of domestic 

 wool must be between 150,000,000 and 200,000,0001bs. 

 We believe, from our own investigations, it comes fully 

 up to the latter figure. If we take, however, the me- 

 dium, viz., I7o,000,0001bs., at Is. 3d. per lb., which 

 is about the average price of the last thirty years, the 

 value of this great raw material produced at home will 

 be i,'10,937,500. The exports of English wool, both 

 in the raw state and in the first stage of consumption, 

 namely yarn, ai-e great, and rapidly increasing. In 

 1857 the exports were 15,000,0001bs. of raw wool, and 

 24,054,0001bs. of yarn ; and the total value of the 

 woollen and worsted exports in that year was 

 £13,045,000. 



According to the estimates of iMr. Baines, which are 

 by no means overrated, it would appear that the fol- 

 lowing is about the annual value of the woollen manu- 

 facture of the kingdom, separate from the worsted 

 manufacture: The raw material used consists of 

 70,000, OOOlbs. of foreign and colonial wool, valued at 

 £4,717,492; 80,000,00(llbs. of British wool, at Is. 3d. 

 per lb., .£5,000,000 ; 30,000,0001bs. of shoddy or soft 

 materials, such as stockings, flannels, kc, torn up to 

 be re-worked, at 2id. per lb., and 15,000,OOOlbs. of 

 mungo, the shreds and rags of woollen cloth, at 4fd. 

 per lb. — together £609,370 ; cotton and other warps 

 used in the union and mixed cloths, £^206,537 ; dye- 

 stufis, oil, and soap, £1,500,000; wages— 150,000 

 workpeople, at 12s. Od. per week, £4,875,000; rent, 

 wear and tear of machinery, repairs, coal, interest on 

 capital, and profit 20 per cent, on above, j£'3,381,080 ; 

 which gives a total of £20,290,079 for the woolleu 

 manufacture. 



The worsted manufacture consumes 80,000,0001bs. 

 of British wool, and 15,000,0()01bs. of foreign and 

 colonial wool, and employs 125,000 hands,making in all 

 275,000 operatives engaged on wool. The total num- 

 ber of persons directly dependent upon these trades 

 may be set down at 837,500 (including the workmen), 

 there being a larger number of dependent workers in 

 auxiliary trades than in connection with any other 

 manufacture. 



These details will serve in some degree to point out 

 the real magnitude and value of the woollen manufac- 

 tures, which have hitherto been most imperfectly 

 known. They have hitherto either been most ridicu- 

 lously exaggerated or wofully imderrated. Let no one 

 hereafter despise wool in a pastoral country like Great 

 Britain, and whose colonies now produce immense 

 supplies ; which supplies are advancing in a most re- 

 markable and satisfactory rate. We know the amount 

 of manufactured goods exported, but we have no guide 

 to the amount consumed by our own large and flourish- 

 ing population in these islands. This some of our 

 most experienced merchants, however, estimate to be 

 thTee-fourHis of the whole manufacture. 



